“Sire, may I present Margaret Sutherland,” he said, immediately understanding that his king was not surprised by her identity. Either his mother had spoken quickly to fill him in, or Artair’s semi-regular correspondence with the king’s camp had preceded this introduction.
As it was, Maggie needed only a second to join the sire with the man’s majestic bearing and the pride in Iain’s voice. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, but she improved quickly, dropping into a graceful curtsy as if she did so daily.
“My king,” she said when she rose. She could not keep the amazement from her voice when she asked, “You are the chief come to our rescue?”
“Indeed, and my honor,” Robert Bruce answered. “Admittedly, it was rather accidental, if not fortuitous. But we were pleased to assist in the name of justice.”
Artair spoke up then. “We’ve a great debt to you, sire.”
Robert Bruce insisted, “The debt is mine.” He included Iain and Maggie and Glenna in his gaze. “Would that I could count on more houses of Scotland to extend such honor and justice in the name of our own people, and such loyalty to our crown.”
“Aye, sire,” Artair agreed.
“But you must excuse us, my king,” Glenna said, taking Maggie’s hand. “We will insist you take respite at Berriedale and we will want to be sure we do ourselves proud.”
Robert Bruce nodded, and the ladies curtsied again before taking their leave. Iain watched them walk away.
The king slapped his hand against Iain’s shoulder and gave out a hearty chuckle. “You’ve all evening then to explain Margaret Sutherland to me.”
When Iain sent him a lopsided grin, understanding now that the king had only schooled his features to show no surprise at the presentation of Maggie, Robert Bruce laughed a bit more.
“Here’s hoping the clarification also explains your gaze when set upon that magnificent creature.”
IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT before any dared, or even desired, to leave the hall. Possibly so many long months about the countryside—at times, actually having to hide out in caves—had made the king even more appreciative of the festive celebration, that he was one of the last to leave the hall. Glenna graciously escorted Robert Bruce up to the family quarters, giving him Iain’s chambers for the night.
The entire evening had been lovely. True, many persons would likely devote some time tomorrow upon reflection, to how close they’d come to catastrophe. And probably only the merriment of the hall, perceived or connived or real and bolstered by their good fortune, had kept Maggie from becoming too somber.
Still, when she and Iain made their way to her chambers only shortly after the king had departed the hall, they were quiet and contemplative. She went willingly into his arms though, saying a prayer of thanks against his chest while he kissed her hair, that God had decided to throw this man into her path, that He’d guided her steps across the river onto Mackay land that day of the storm.
He loved her tenderly then, showing her more passion and so much pleasure.
Afterward, Maggie was sleepy, her eyes heavy, yet she said with some lingering disbelief, “Our liege lord lies in a bed just beyond this wall and my husband is dead.”
Iain scratched his hand over his chest, holding her at his side. “Aye. It’s been a day.”
“I might be best served by processing this in the morning.”
She wasn’t sure if she interpreted her own present thinking about this correctly, but some part of her just now asserted that Kenneth Sutherland didn’t matter, that he never had.
Only Iain mattered.
“Your husband lies next to you,” he said, as if he had now a similar thought.
Maggie tipped her face up to him. “Since when.”
“Since whenever Fate decreed it. At birth, five years ago, or last winter during the storm. Dinna matter. You belong to me, and I to you.”
“There was a time, not too long ago, I had thought that Fate had no love for me. I have to wonder now if I was wrong.”
“About Fate having a hand?”
“Mm.”
“I canna believe otherwise,” Iain said with some thoughtfulness. “Both of us in places we should not have been when first we met. It makes no sense that I might have fallen in love with you last winter in that cave. It’s no’ possible, aye? To ken you love someone so soon after meeting them. But, Maggie Bryce, I canna explain how I...nevertheless, I ken it to be true. I came for you at Blackhouse because you’d no’ ever been far from my thoughts in all the months we were apart,” he said evenly. “Honestly, I used to admonish myself—this lass can no’ mean so much to you, no’ after so short a time.”
“Sometimes it just is,” she said, her heart fluttering with joy.
“That’s smacks of Artair.”
“Archie, actually.”
“Impossible.”
“But true.”
“Please dinna ever bring Archie into this bed again.” She sensed a grin in his response.
Maggie let out a sleepy giggle. “But is that not true, that sometimes it just is?”
“Aye, Maggie Bryce.”
“I should be thankful then, that you heeded not your own admonishment?”
“I could no’ ignore it. No more than I could no’ think of you.”
Her voice was sad when she admitted, “I am sorry to report that I listened better to the voices in my head trying to purge thoughts of you.”
“That’s no’ good, Maggie Bryce.”
She felt the need to explain, to ease the disappointment she detected in his voice. “At first, I closed my eyes and thought only of you whenever...I needed strength. Pretty soon, however, it occurred to me that so many times that I brought your image to mind were during really terrible times, to get me through it. But then that was not fair to you, and I was so afraid I might then begin to associate you with so many...bad things.” She finished weakly, sorrowfully. “After a while, it seemed best not to think of you at all, lest our very short time together be forever tainted.”
“But you’ll think of me now, aye, Maggie Bryce?”
“Always.”
“No more a short time together, though. We’ve all the rest of our lives.”
With so much hope inside her, she asked, “It starts now? All the rest of our lives?”
“Aye.” He kissed her lips. “As husband and wife proper. Our king has kindly sent for Bishop Belagaumbe. The king himself insists on giving away the bride.”
“He does not!” Maggie alleged, suddenly very wakeful.
Iain chuckled. “Aye, he does. Said it would be a great honor to him.”
“To him? An honor to him? Oh.” And then softly, “Oh, my.” She sighed with further contentment just as Iain turned and hovered over her.
His gorgeous eyes gleamed. He pressed his lips softly to hers, then placed another gentle kiss upon her cheek.
“Does my husband have any plans to love me again as he just did?”
“He’s thinking of little else, truth be told.”
“Will he get to it soon, tonight yet?”
A hint of a chuckle shrouded his words. “His wife will have to wait a few more minutes, while he stalls yet to catch his breath.”
Maggie slipped her hand beneath the coverlet, skimmed it over his abdomen and moved it lower. “Sadly, his wife has little patience.”
Iain smiled down at her, raising his brows when her hand found him. “Nothing to be sad about, Maggie Bryce.”
Epilogue
“NO DARLING,” SAID MAGGIE, “it needs to be flatter. The round ones don’t skip so well.”
Another rock was pressed very close to her eye only seconds later. “This one?”
Maggie grinned and backed her face away, which immediately shrunk the size of the stone to normal. Why did children think they needed to place an object only inches from your eye when they wanted you to see? “Oh, that one might do. Show your da’, see if he agrees.”
She sat on the big plaid, spread wide and flat
on the beach, and hoped her husband would pull her to her feet when the time came to return to the keep. She put her hands on the plaid behind her and pointed her bare toes toward the sea.
And sighed.
Everything she loved was before her. The sight would never grow old.
Iain stood in ankle deep water, barefooted and bare-chested, three-year old Gretchen on his shoulders. Archie stood next to him, his tunic tugged by six-year-old Robert, to whom he bent his attention.
Young Hew, who had turned four only yesterday, ran from his mother and went as far as the highest wave, screeching for his father, holding the stone he’d found as high as his little arm would allow. Iain waved him forward. Hew danced all around the smooth rolling waves, trying to find the best place to enter that would see his bare feet wet the least. He never did step into the water until Iain came for him, pulling Gretchen from his shoulders and settling her on his hip, reaching for Hew’s hand with his free one. Only then did Hew find his courage. When they’d walked back to where Archie and Robert stood, Iain let go of his son’s hand and accepted the rock from him. Hew immediately transferred his hand to his father’s leg for security and watched with the greatest of expectation as his da’ skipped the rock perfectly across the almost calm sea. Hew jumped up and down, crying out “Seven!” for the number of bounces it made before it dropped to the bottom of the sea.
Maggie closed her eyes, just for a moment.
She was tired. But she was also so very happy. Sometimes she thought she didn’t deserve to be so happy; she was no one special, why should she have all this joy? But there was sadness, too. They’d loss Glenna several years ago, and another bairn before Hew, and Duncan had fallen at Bannockburn, which still broke her heart, almost a year later. She missed them all, didn’t pass a day without thinking of at least one of them, sometimes all of them.
She opened her eyes when a great force hit the ground next to her. Hew had jumped or stumbled onto the plaid, grinning up at his mother.
“Did the other Hew ken how to skip stones?”
Her son had been fascinated with the story Maggie had told him only recently, how he’d been named in honor of a very special person. She’d relied on Arch and Iain, since the initial telling, to fill in more detail of the very earnest young man she had known so briefly. Her son had many questions.
“He might have,” she said. “I’m sure if he’d tried he would have been very good at it.”
She looked up to see Iain and Archie and the children walking toward her. Iain set Gretchen onto the sand as soon as it was dry and lifted his gaze to Maggie. When he was close enough he fell to the plaid at her side and kissed her very round belly.
“You have to help me up when it’s time,” she told him.
Iain grinned and then favored her lips with a quick kiss. With that he laid flat on his back, using the spare linen she’d brought along as a pillow. Gretchen thought nothing of sitting on her father’s flat stomach, her tiny bare feet just touching the plaid between Maggie and Iain. She placed her hand on her mam’s belly and waited.
Maggie tilted her head with some sympathy to her green-eyed daughter. “She’s sleeping, I think.” There was no kicking now, not lately.
Pointedly, Archie said, “He is sleeping.”
Maggie stuck her tongue out at him. “We’re already outnumbered. Allow me to dream, will you, Arch?”
Her dear friend hadn’t left her side, indeed had not stepped foot outside Berriedale, since a year after Maggie had come to Berriedale. He’d been injured in a riding accident. His leg had never healed quite right that sitting a horse or moving without a limp was nigh impossible. She thought he was content, though, liked to think so anyway, even as his fighting days had ended with that accident. Whatever despair he’d known to have his purpose taken away had disappeared the very moment tiny little Robert had been set into his arms for the very first time. And more of the melancholy left with each passing year, with each new child delivered unto the laird and mistress of Berriedale. Archie was, at varying times, the children’s favorite plaything, a strict disciplinarian when needed, and the very one any of her children would seek out to beg boons their mother or father had denied them. But he was, first and foremost, Maggie’s most cherished friend, the one who had held her hand during her labor with Gretchen because Iain had been gone to the king’s side in Perth at the time.
Several years ago, when Maggie learned how easy it was to amuse her children all in one spot and for hours at a time without fuss, she’d begun regularly bringing them down to the beach. Soon after, she’d employed Will Carpenter for a special project. It hadn’t truly needed any great skill, only plenty of brute strength, so that he’d called upon several soldiers to assist and after only a day, they managed to first, cut down and completely strip a wide tree until it was bare. One end had been hacked and hewn to a needle point. Next, the grunts had dug as deep as they could in the sand, just about midway between the water and the bottom of the embankment. The pointed end of the trunk was shoved down into the sand and packed tight; and then the soldiers had pounded away with a huge fat-tipped maul until the stump was secured deep in the sand and only about two feet of it rose above the ground. To that, Will Carpenter had affixed a sturdy and smooth chair seat that had yet to be claimed by the sea.
That was Archie’s chair, as he was unable to easily maneuver himself onto the ground and less so able to get himself up, but invariably was with her when she brought the children to the beach. Sometimes, though rarely, Artair would join them as well and Archie would give up his seat to the old man, who moved with far less agility these days than even Archie.
They sat quietly for a time, with Gretchen eventually abandoning her father’s belly to chase after her brothers who were higher up on the beach, investigating critters and creatures in and around the dunes and rocks.
Maggie closed her eyes again, listening to the sound of the waves, hearing tiny little voices rise above it with excitement over a sidewalker, as they called the crabs they regularly discovered. She wondered how much longer she could hold off the inevitable, what her tightening belly was telling her, and had been telling her since she’d first sat down.
Out of the blue, and to the sky above, Iain said, “We have a good life, aye?”
If Archie were surprised by the reflective query, he gave no indication. He answered, quite readily, “Seems almost criminal, having more highs than lows.”
Maggie smiled at this. Iain had never not been demonstrative in his love, but she sometimes thought these casual references to how blessed they were might be her favorite.
Just a man, lying on a beach, surrounded by the beauty of nature and the beauty of love and considering his good fortune.
It pleased her greatly, though she said nothing, was suddenly of a mind that this labor was indeed progressing more quickly than any others.
“Arch,” said Iain, “what do you make of my wife’s silence? Should I be concerned?”
Archie grinned at Maggie across Iain. “Probably counting the minutes until the bairns can be put to bed and she can find her own. Sleep is a rare commodity.”
Maggie pulled her hands in front of her, swiping the wee bit of sand off them.
“There’ll be little of that anytime soon,” she said and nudged at her husband, whose eyes were closed. “C’mon then, your daughter wants to come now.”
Iain’s eyes snapped open. In the next second, her husband was on his feet and Archie was laughing and standing as well.
“Jesu, Maggie McEwen!” Iain scolded, donning his tunic, affixing his sword and belt to his person with jerky, panicked motions. “Why would you come all the way down here if you ken that the bairn was coming?”
She rolled her eyes and lifted her hands to him. “Obviously, I didn’t know until we were already down here.”
“Let’s go, you three,” Arch called to the children. “Your brother’s coming now.”
Iain pulled her to her feet. His instinct then was to lift her
in his arms. Maggie wouldn’t have it. “I’ll be walking back, helping her out, so to speak.”
He wanted to argue. His mouth thinned, but Maggie remained adamant and began the long trek uphill, with Iain anxious at her side.
This was her sixth pregnancy, the fourth she’d carried full term; the labor and work frightened her not at all, but she knew what could happen. She paused while a contraction took hold and said to Iain, “You are in love with me still?”
He held her hand, supporting her, wincing as she made a face for the pain. “I am. You are my world.”
“What about those three?” She asked, and then blew out short and quick breaths.
“They’re all right, I guess,” her husband teased. “But you? You are everything.”
It passed and she began walking again. She asked the same question almost every time, whenever he’d been with her for the birthing, knowing of too many women who didn’t survive it. She needed to hear it.
And he needed to know. She turned and met his gaze, her gait tedious.
“I am so in love with you. There hasn’t been a day, not even one, when I didn’t know that or feel that. Not since the moment you opened your eyes to me in that cave.”
“I ken that, you have never left me wondering or wanting,” he acknowledged. “But Maggie, if you’re no’ going to move quicker, I am going to pick you up.”
She knew very well how to have her way. “It hurts less if I walk through it.”
This appeased him, but only somewhat. “Aye, but walk faster, Maggie. I’m taking on a lot of years here.”
She smiled and lifted her gaze to gauge her position. Even the children, and Archie with his plodding gait, were far ahead of them. Robert was screaming at the top of his lungs, to be heard by the guards on the wall, “My brother is coming!”
The man-door was pushed open, soldiers spilling out onto the ridge above the embankment. Donal scooped up Gretchen and took Hew’s hand, his smile wide, ushering them into the yard. Robert waited for Archie, running back to him to take his hand and prod him along.
The Truth of Her Heart (Highlander Heroes Book 5) Page 30